


the condemned woman

by bigstrongboss



Category: Team Fortress 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 08:23:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigstrongboss/pseuds/bigstrongboss
Summary: power for power's sake.





	the condemned woman

She takes what she wants.

That tendency makes her strong. While her inferiors, muzzled dogs, are busied by their own self-loathing and mindless aggression, she’s willing her desires into something material. Her craving to dominate is insatiable. She’s better than anyone that has existed or ever will exist because she’s stronger than them, uninhibited by useless conscience.

Miss Pauling is downstairs, beneath The Administrator's Surveillance Room, with a sprawl of documents, stationery and unfired shells scattered across her desk. They distil down to a single unified mass of drudgery. Scraps of power The Administrator discards, which she laps up like a starving cat licking an empty bowl.

Every action she takes is geared specifically, like the elaborate machinations of a processing unit, towards obtaining more authority. Power feels good in her hands. She was made to live in the top ranks and she thrives there, because she knows what she wants and she _gets_ it, unlike the rest of those stupid, self-pitying morons. She's unyielding, unrelenting, cold and perfect.

That's how she's supposed to be. Barking commands which are carried out by sweating, stinking, subordinates, who are aware they're being subjugated but unable to change that because their minds are clogged with the thick tar of oppression. Mercenaries want to think they have power because they're big and burly, armed to the teeth and beyond, but in doing so they only demonstrate gross misunderstanding of what real power means. If it were beneficial, she would pity them.

She turns her attention to a screen on her left. RED's Demoman is bandaging up his sword hand, which was damaged from an encounter with the enemy Scout. He can't fight without his hand. If she altered his respawn records, she could put him in the humiliating position of begging for his own body part back. She doesn't doubt he would do it. They'll do anything for their jobs, especially him.

Demoman is a fascinating case. He is, in every way, her polar opposite- overworked, outwardly self-loathing, desperate to be told what to do and how to live. His life has been dictated by an overbearing mother and his country's traditions. The profession he takes so much pride in is an inherited passion, an obligation to his forefathers, a choice made for him by his blood. He doesn’t seem aware of that fact. Or maybe it’s another supposition drowned in litres of alcohol.

He’s suffered a lot at her hands, as he deserves. He yearns for punishment to regulate his self-hatred, which has carved and eroded his mind like a glacier shapes a valley.

Spy backstabs him. She turns away from the monitor.

There’s nothing she can’t make any of those mercenaries do, and consequently, there’s nothing she can’t get. The Australium pumping through her veins is only a technicality- she’s invulnerable. No one deserves life more than she does, because no one else has the brutality to seize it. Cold, clean, violence. She always wins.

She won't die until she chooses to.


End file.
